Christopher Lee Burdett Roanoke, Virginia M.A., European Affairs & International Economics, 10Hns Hopkins-SAIS, 2000 B.A., G
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SOWING THE SEEDS OF EMPIRE EDUCATION & IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1870-1914 Christopher Lee Burdett Roanoke, Virginia M.A., European Affairs & International Economics, 10hns Hopkins-SAIS, 2000 B.A., Government, College of William and Mary in Virginia, 1996 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Politics University of Virginia December, 2012 i ABSTRACT Within International Relations, education has received little attention as factor that shapes identities. Where education is mentioned, the treatment is often casual and not very systematic. This dissertation seeks to address these shortcomings. The author argues that education influences what we think and do by imparting understandings of the world and our place within it, and by cultivating skills that enable us to assume social, economic and political roles. To observe the mechanism by which education plays a role, the author executes a process trace of education in England and France from 1870 until 1914. At the time, education was an active concern to policymakers in both countries, and it was consciously deployed for the purposes of identity construction. Britain and France were also Great Powers with colonial interests abroad. This offers the opportunity to assess education against a backdrop of imperial expansion. The trace occurs in three stages. The first stage considers larger curricular and pedagogical trends in order to determine the content of education in England and France. The second narrows the focus to consider how empire was taught through history and geography textbooks. Finally, the third stage explores the linkages between education and the training of the élite, emphasizing roles associated with imperial administration and governance. The results indicate that education influenced identity in important ways. In England, the cognitive and functional processes worked to frame the British Empire as closely intertwined with a sense of Englishness. In contrast, French education tended to subordinate ii the Empire to purely nationalist concerns which, the author argues, served to reinforce a prevailing culture of ambivalence, if not antagonism, to the French Empire. This dissertation offers a novel, replicable approach to international politics and contributes to a burgeoning literature on identity. At the same time, it answers a call within the constructivist paradigm for greater insight into internal processes behind identity. This approach not only sheds light on the cases treated, but also provides a means to strengthen the constructivist contribution to the explanation of phenomena of interest to the field. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. A Case for Education 1 2. A Mechanistic Approach to Education and Identity 44 3. Structure and Opportunity in English and French 85 Education 4. Content & the Cognitive Process (I): Curricular Trends 173 in English and French Education 5. Content & the Cognitive Process (II): Education and the 252 Task of Teaching Empire 6. Training the Administrative and Governing Élite 333 7. Assessing English and French Education and Prospects 378 for Future Research Bibliography 426 iv I dedicate this dissertation to my family. We have made this journey together, and I will be forever grateful for your unending encouragement and support. I extend my heartfelt appreciation to my wife and children. Jennifer, you have been patient beyond measure. You are my steadfast companion, sharing in my struggles and, now, my success. Graeme and Rhys, you are beacons of light, bringing endless joy while inspiring me to leave no dream unfulfilled. You are constant reminders of what is truly important. I would also like to acknowledge the guidance and support of Michael Joseph Smith, who believed in this project and gave me the opportunity to pursue it. His faith in me fueled my resolve, and I am fortunate to call him a colleague and a friend. v In memory of Sue Owens Updike. 1 CHAPTER ONE A CASE FOR EDUCATION “Of all political questions that of education is perhaps the most important…” - Napoleon As the Grande Armée swept across Europe at the turn of the 19th century, Jean Francois Champollion languished in a ‘prison’. But his cell was not as one would imagine it; instead of stone, its walls were lined with 526 books – books hand selected by the Emperor Napoleon himself as part of the national curriculum of French schools. Champollion – best known for his critical contribution to deciphering the Rosetta Stone – regarded his lycée in Grenoble as a prison of the mind. To hear his telling, were it not for his passion for antiquity Jean Francois might never have escaped Napoleon’s struggles to remake Europe into France and the French into, well, the French.1 Despite Champollion’s characterization of his adolescent education, Napoleon’s policies were not simply self-aggrandizing. Rather, Napoleon merely pressed on with reforms initiated during the height of the revolution in France. Schools were to be the fonts of progress and nationhood, as well as a means to overturn established conventions standing in the way of ideas bound up in the Enlightenment or, as Napoleon would have it, French grandeur. “Of all political questions,” Napoleon remarked in 1805, “that [of education] is perhaps the most important. There cannot be a firmly established political state unless there is a teaching body with definitely recognized principles. If the child is not taught from 1 Drawing from personal letters Daniel Meyerson briefly recounts Champollion’s reaction to and struggles with education in France under Napoleon in an otherwise forgettable book, The Linguist and the Emperor: Napoleon and Champollion’s Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone (New York: Random House, 2005), 82-91. 2 infancy that he ought to be a republican or a monarchist, a Catholic or a free-thinker, the state will not constitute a nation; it will rest on uncertain and shifting foundations; and it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change.”2 And while Champollion resisted, many of his classmates fell sway to the textbook understanding of French identity which legitimized Napoleon’s efforts to create a universal state (in the image of France, of course). Napoleon conceived of education as have many societies and governments across time, location, form and ideology: education is a valuable if not indispensable means to instill and replicate certain values and cultural norms, as well as to ensure that segments of the population can fill various roles and perform essential tasks (e.g. bureaucrats, lawyers, merchants). In ancient China, for example, the imperial court employed education to simultaneously ‘enlighten’ the masses and choose civil administrators.3 Closer to home, education in Western Europe was for centuries largely the preserve of the Church; and even as the modern state developed, governments tended to cede oversight of educational institutions to religious authorities who would, it was hoped, instill a sense of morality in the masses – presuming, of course, that they could be enticed into the schoolroom.4 In subsequent decades, as nationalism began to sweep through Europe, civic authorities similarly looked to primary education in order to “train individuals to be citizens of nation- states” and “inculcate loyalty to the state.”5 And later, the Soviet Union relied upon its education system throughout the Cold War to create a highly-trained, ideologically- 2 Quoted in Edward H. Reisner, Nationalism and Education since 1789: a Social and Political History of Modern Education (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 35. 3 Cheng Kai-Ming, Jin Xinhuo & Gu Xiaobo, “From Training to Education: Lifelong Learning in China,” Comparative Education 35: 2 (June, 1999), 119. 4 Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2003), 105-11. 5 Ibid, 247-9. Cf., Paul Kennedy, “The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900-1970,” Journal of Contemporary History 8: 1 (Jan., 1973), 77-100; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); and Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1990), 91-97. 3 disciplined workforce through a “purposeful upbringing.”6 Meanwhile the United States pursued education reforms in Germany and Japan in order to democratize and demilitarize the general populace after the Second World War. The common thread that binds these examples together is the belief that education can have a profound effect on the social, economic and political fabric by functioning as a mechanism for identity construction. Furthermore, education can be deployed in order to promote particular identities conducive to certain desired outcomes. These are not simply localized phenomena. Education’s reach extends beyond the domestic order by shaping identities that constitute national interests and equipping governments and administrators with the requisite knowledge and skills to execute policy on an international level. Regrettably, theoretical and empirical research has tended to leave education’s contribution to international politics unexplored. In some instances, this is a reflection of ontological assumptions that preclude unit-level factors like education from causal explanations. In others, education is likely overlooked because there is no clear sense of its role as a mechanism for identity construction. As a result, its potential effect on outcomes in the international